


Not Exactly a Love Child

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Gattaca (1997)
Genre: Artificial Insemination, Depression, Eugene Lives, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Post-Canon, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 20:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12755520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Ten months after marrying Irene, Vincent calls a family meeting.“Irene and I have been talking about having a child."





	Not Exactly a Love Child

Eugene always had mixed feelings about Vincent marrying Irene. She was a good woman, certainly, and willing to keep their secret. And it was good to see Vincent living a happy life, always, especially since his life with Irene was in many ways separate from his identity as Jerome. Eugene was fine with Vincent’s success being as Jerome—after all, that was what he worked for, wasn’t it?—but it always seemed to bother Vincent somewhat to pretend to be someone he wasn’t. Around Irene, he didn’t pretend.

So undoubtedly Irene was good for Vincent. Eugene knew that the main reason he felt ambivalent about it all was jealousy. Irene didn’t dislike him, and Vincent thought of him as a brother, but when they were together, he still felt somewhat left out. Silly, really. Vincent loved him more than anyone else except Irene, and he had told him so. But still. Marriage, domestic bliss…he would never have that. He had given it up.

But it was good that Irene and Vincent were together. Eugene tried to stay out of their business except where necessary. But there were times when Vincent dragged him right into it.

Ten months after the wedding, for example, he called a family meeting. Eugene rolled his eyes at that—they weren’t a family—but still attended. Since it was on the lower floor of the house, his floor, there was no real point in avoiding it.

“Irene and I have been talking about having a child,” Vincent said.

Eugene raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations.” He had figured they were headed that direction. They were well enough off financially. “We’d have to adjust the insurance plan, I suppose. Do you want me to start making phone calls?”

Vincent smiled, oddly nervous. “Maybe sometime soon, yeah. We wanted to make sure you were okay with it, us having a baby.”

“I don’t think it’s any of my business.”

“Well, it’s still your house. We’d probably be living here with whatever children we have…it’s not really a house built for kids…” Vincent laughed a little awkwardly.

Irene cut in, “We’re concerned about genetics.”

Weren’t they always?

Irene was sitting very still and very upright, Vincent too for that matter. It was then that it occurred to Eugene that they weren’t just trying to ask him for permission. They were asking him for a donation.

After all, the child would need to be registered. That meant their genetic material would be taken and carefully analyzed. Seeing parentage was the easiest thing in the world, and unless they wanted it to look like Irene had had an affair with a janitor named Vincent Anton Freeman behind Jerome Morrow’s back and was trying to pass off someone else’s bastard as his child, they needed the child to have Jerome’s DNA.

Eugene smiled tightly. “I’ll have samples prepared for you to take to the clinics by tomorrow.”

* * *

 

It was a possibility Eugene should have considered. Obvious, really, that if Vincent and Irene wanted a kid they would want it to be Eugene’s kid. Common sense. But he hadn’t considered it, because frankly, Vincent never came across as a very sensible person. He had already infiltrated one of the most safeguarded scientific facilities in the country under false pretenses. Why wouldn’t he want his kid to infiltrate society in the same way?

Then Eugene would have thought Vincent would be more possessive. Surely he would want his child to be his own. Not Jerome Morrow’s. He made an effort, after all, to separate his own life from Jerome’s fake life. At home, he made Irene call him Vincent (though not Eugene—he was used to “Jerome” from that direction). He talked loud politics against geneism. He even would occasionally speak about his past or wear his glasses. Home and family were Vincent’s domain, not Jerome’s. And there was nowhere that was more vital, surely, than with a child.

And then, perhaps this reason was foolish, but Eugene knew Vincent himself was a faith birth. His parents had calculated nothing about his creation, only allowed it to happen. That had to be more natural, right?

Eugene’s parents had paid good money for his genes. His dad had wanted him to be a runner. His mom had wanted him to be a scientist. Both of them had wanted him to live a couple centuries or something insane like that. They had paid his way into the world and when he was born, they had treated him accordingly, as an investment. He had to be smart and fit and healthy and motivated and charismatic and everything a gentleman should be, or they had wasted precious funds on a disappointment.

So when he studied and trained constantly, and kept a perpetual smile on his face. In college he drank and partied a little, just enough to be called normal. He flirted but not too much and only with girls, made jokes but only tasteful ones, and in all ways imitated what he thought was the image his parents had in their minds. He needed to make them proud by being the best, by being perfect. He was a winner, a scholar and an athlete. He wasn’t tired of trying all the time, anxious over their approval, lonely, constantly angry at himself, depressed—none of those qualities were what his parents had paid for. And certainly he wasn’t interested in men. That would have made him a waste of money indeed.

But all of that, most of it anyhow, was a lie. And when he lost the Olympics and gave up on pleasing them and started drinking, hooking up with men and not bothering to be polite, his parents cut him off immediately. “Call us when you’re done trying to kill yourself,” they said. “Until then, there’s nothing we can do for you.”

Nothing he could do for them, more like. He didn’t miss them. (He did miss them, but it didn’t matter. Nothing he could do about it.)

Vincent liked to complain about his parents and Eugene let him but he always felt a little jealous. At least Vincent’s parents hadn’t used him, even if they had somewhat belittled him. He was a child of love, and not a child of careful selection and experimentation, a Frankenstein’s monster of melded strands of DNA. And that, Eugene thought, had to be what made him so extraordinary: the fact that he was a mistake, a glorious mistake made of passion and pleasure, and not a child of cold science like Eugene himself.

* * *

 

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Eugene confessed the next day, as he handed Vincent the samples. (Trying not to feel awkward—he’d given Vincent so many bodily fluids in the past he’d thought nothing could faze him, but apparently something could, and this was it.)

“If you don’t want a kid around, we can wait,” Vincent said. “Or if you don’t feel comfortable with me using your sperm…”

“I don’t give a fuck about you using my body. What’s mine is yours.” Eugene shrugged uncomfortably. He wet his lips. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for something like this, though?”

Vincent shrugged too. He sat down at the table near Eugene, who was in his wheelchair as usual but rolled up to it next to him. “I guess by now I’ve accepted that I’m Jerome Morrow,” he said after a minute. “My kids will have to be Jerome Morrow’s kids too. I’ll still love them.”

“Yes, but my genes in your kids?”

“They’ll live forever.”

“There are always flukes.” Eugene took out a cigarette. “But if they do turn out like me, won’t that be…”

“We don’t look that different. I don’t think anyone’s likely to notice.” Vincent looked up at the ceiling. “Like you said, they see me, they see you.”

“Yes, but we aren’t exactly the same.”

“And that’s why the genes need to be yours. They need to be convincingly your children. I know it’s…”

“They might turn out to be too much like me,” Eugene cut in. “Have you considered that?” Vincent gave him a look. He added, “You don’t want your kids walking in front of cars for fun.”

Vincent leaned back in his chair. Studying Eugene’s face, he said, “You’re worried they’ll be like you.”

“That’s what genes do, after all.” Eugene lit his cigarette. “Replicate.” He gave Vincent a sideways smile.

Vincent stared off into the distance. He started to speak, then stopped. He looked at Eugene.

“They might also turn out gay,” Eugene added, to fill the silence. “I…probably should have mentioned that sooner.” He’d always avoided the subject—figured Vincent might feel awkward living in the same house if he knew, although he half suspected Vincent knew anyhow.

Vincent shook his head. “You’re my best friend, Eugene. You do know that?”

“You’ve said so.” Eugene smiled lightly. “I’m also kind of an ass.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone’s genes in my children, maybe. But if my kids turn out like you, that’s fine.” He touched Eugene’s arm. “And I knew that you were gay—did you think I didn’t know that? And you’re an ass but you gave me an entire new life.” He squeezed Eugene’s arm. “If that’s what’s worrying you…”

Eugene made a face. “It’s a nasty process, anyway. Picking and choosing what your kid’s going to be like…”

“Irene and I have decided to make it random. There are clinics that will do that for you. We aren’t going to engineer them, if that’s what has you worried.”

Eugene bit his lip. Was that better or worse? He’d been engineered badly, he thought. But he wasn’t sure whose fault that was. Should his parents have never tried to select his genes? Were their genes terrible to begin with, hopelessly flawed even if they appeared to be excellent? Or could they perhaps have done it better—created a man who really would have lived up to their expectations, would have been stronger than Eugene, better than…

“Genes aren’t everything, you know,” Vincent said. “I mean, look at me. A study in terrible genetics and I think I turned out okay.” He laughed quietly. “People become who they are through choice, and through their lives. Irene and I think your genes are the best option we have, and we aren’t worried about them.” He paused. “You know we won’t treat your kid like your parents treated you, right?”

Eugene looked up, startled.

“It’s not that I think…”

“You know you’ll be a parent to them too, right? Every step of the way. And we won’t treat them like a science project or like they should be perfect. We never would, and you wouldn’t either.” Vincent lowered his voice. “That’s why genes don’t matter. We’ll raise them to not care about that. And we won’t care either. We’ll love them.”

Eugene slowly nodded.

Genetic perfection. He had almost worked himself into believing Vincent’ kids—his own kids, too—needed better genes, needed to be more perfect than himself. He’d fallen into the exact same trap as his parents.

But he would be better.

He took a drag of the cigarette. “Going to be hard keeping the secret with a kid around, though.”

“It’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out.” Vincent smiled. “Picture you as a dad, though.”

Eugene scowled. “Hey. I’m not…”

But he would be a father, wouldn’t he?

With a frown, he turned his wheelchair around. “I’m going to go work on samples.”

“I’ll be calling up the clinic. We need to make an appointment.”

“Good. For once I’m not your secretary.”

He wheeled away, thinking about how he wasn’t ready to be a father at all, thinking about how he’d never really thought he would be a father, thinking about how something in him melted a little at the thought even as it panicked. He was going to have a kid, he and Vincent and Irene. And even though it was ridiculous, really, to call them a family, he couldn’t help but think there was nothing that could have felt more natural.

**Author's Note:**

> There's a deleted scene from a rough draft of Gattaca's script that has Vincent tell Irene he would rather have children the natural way, but ever since I read a particular fic on ff.net my views on this have gone somewhat the other direction. Vincent wouldn't believe his kid would be worse or weaker due to "poor genetics" but he also would worry about his kid having societal disadvantages, and of course about how to maintain the masquerade that Vincent is Jerome Morrow. So you come into a bit of a situation.  
> I always headcanon Eugene as some sort of queer for the most part, so although it's kind of irrelevant to this fic it did end up getting thrown in. Forgive me the jumble of philosophy and emotions that this fic entails! I wrote it mostly because I was feeling angsty and I must admit it's not very well organized. But I do think Eugene would have concerns, and I also think he would totally become a father to the child. Because really Vincent, Irene and Eugene would be a family if Vincent and Irene married and Eugene lived--an unconventional family, but a family nonetheless. I'm not quite sure what ship you'd call this fic, BTW: it's not quite OT3 level, but something near there? Idk.  
> Tell me your thoughts in the comments! Gattaca's a rare fandom, so I like to hear from my fellow fans.


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